Perfect by Nature
by Kaslyna
Summary: Rated M, more details inside. Post-finale so spoilers for it and pretty much the entire damned series. Please read and review, you know you want to! :D A long Azula-centric story after her breakdown, set four or five months after the finale.
1. It Never Was and Never Will Be

**A/N: As of right now I'm not 100% sure of where I want this to end up. But I'm going to write as I go. I'll use my experiences again. Note that they only imply to the craziness and insanity and whatnot. :/ Rated 'M' for violence and implied rape and implied/graphic consensual sex and darkness and angst. I'm going to say Azula was fourteen when the show started and that the show ended a year later so she is fifteen. The title is from Everybody's Fool by Evanescence and you'll see how it fits soon enough. Set after the finale. :/ Set four or five months after the finale, so spoilers for it of course! :D Hinted Zutara and Taang, as well as Mai Lee and Sukka. Some minor OC/Azula but nothing major for a few chapters.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing and I don't know who the hell does, but if you sue me all I got is some pretzels and frosting. :/**

* * *

_Perfect by nature_

_Icons of self indulgence_

_Just what we all need_

_More lies about a world that_

_Never was and never will be_

_Have you no shame?_

_Don't you see me?_

_You know you've got everybody fooled_

_~Evanescence, Everybody's Fool_

* * *

It was a desperate cry, a plea for help.

No one heard her. No one cared anymore. No one knew what she knew. How you could scrub and scrub yourself but the dirt would linger on your skin. How after a while you could just close off what was happening and float away, drifting until you were numb. How you no longer got scared nor tried to flee when you were called to see him. How it just became a part of daily life.

It had started when she was eight or nine. She's not quite sure. Not too sure she really wants to know, either. Every single fucking night. And no one but they knew. No one really cared, even back then. Zuko didn't know. He was too weak to open his eyes to reality. And so she grew cold, distant, closing off her heart from him. Hating and resenting him was so much easier, so more dignified to her, than living a lie in which she was his loving sister and having to watch him blindly stumble through the possibilities.

So, no, Zuko didn't know. He might have cared at one point. But by the time of his being exiled she was too far gone and he'd grown cruel to her, too. Somedays she regrets shutting him out. Most days she doesn't allow herself to even think of him, though. It's just far too painful, far too shameful for her to entertain the mocking taunts in her head.

She gets two meals a day in the asylum. Breakfast and dinner. If she's good, sometimes a light lunch. There is a team of doctors she refuses to talk to. She can't let them know. She can't speak to them about these things. How she had fallen so far was still a mystery to her and she knew they'd pick and pry until she broke down again. Not giving a damn for the little girl trapped inside of the young woman's body.

Some people in the cells nearby cry out or laugh and sometimes she hears them entertaining the guards, another way to get what you want or need in here. But she's entertained one too many men in her life and she refuses to sell herself out for moldy bread and stale cheese.

This world was frighteningly large to Azula. Most days she felt like a child. Not all, but most. And today she lies in her cell. She's wearing a red buttoned-up tunic and red pants, her uniform of sorts.

She gets visitors sometimes. Zuko comes and goes once a month and she can tell he feels obligated to do so. Mai and Ty Lee visit once a week and they seem forced but enjoy time with her nevertheless. Mai had dumped Zuko and was dating Ty Lee, which in her twisted mind was ironically amusing. Zuko barely said more than he had to, but from the girls she knows he's dating Katara, the water-bender. Aang and Toph are dating, too, and Sokka and Suki. Gossiping is the only thing keeping her somewhat sane these days.

Right now there's no one but her. In the cell next to her a young woman (she's not sure of her name, maybe Ida?) has a guard over. Azula is on her side on the cot next to what's-her-name's cell, pushed up against the wall, curled into a tiny ball in the fetal position. Her eyes are wide open. Staring at the wall, there but not really there.

She's in her father's room again. It's where she unfortunately goes when the girl in the next cell over has a friend over. It's almost involuntary at this point. Tears stream out of her eyes and down her cheeks, pooling on the bed.

_"You're a prodigy, Azula,"_ the innuendo he repeated over and over stings and burns a hole into her too-far-gone mind. She screams and sobs.

They come and restrain her and sedate her.

She's too far gone to give a damn or put up an actual fight.

* * *

When she's awake breakfast is there. She eats, hesitantly still. She believes today is Sunday. Or at least that's what she thinks; no one pays too much attention to time anymore. Anyways, that means that Mai and Ty Lee will come by around noon. They'll smuggle something in for her to eat. They always usually manage to do so, after all.

Besides the cot there is a toilet, sink, mirror, a small, rusted tin washtub, a small table and two cushions for seats, giving some semblance of a home. Each Wednesday she and the other girls on the cellblock wash their three outfits.

Aside from visitors and laundry day Azula is not allowed out of her cell. Instead, meals and other necessities are delivered to her instead.

The day is spent counting cracks in the ceiling and talking to her shadow. Her only real, true friend anymore. A guard announces Mai and Ty Lee have arrived and that she has half an hour to get ready. She uses the toilet, washes her hands, bathes quickly, and changes into the freshest, unused uniform she saves for visitors. She looks at her reflection in the mirror.

Her hair has grown out now, after her bout of insanity four or five months ago. She's glad but is not quite sure why. Aside from Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and her onetime visit from Iroh, as well as the guards, she has no one to see her, to impress upon anymore.

The closet thing to a friend here is one of the guards, Zhao, a young man named after the admiral. He's about sixteen or seventeen, when Zhao was in his prime, hence his name. They talk and gossip about mundane things when they can. In another time, another world she wouldn't know him by name, much less talk to him. Or maybe she'd date him. But she's here, she's now. Sometimes her past is surreal and she can't be actually sure it really happened, that she didn't just dream it did.

But then Zuko or Mai and Ty Lee would show up and all hopes, bleak as they were, of that being the true case vanish and she's left sighing and wishing and hoping again.

Somedays the pain is all she has left.

Somedays it's almost enough.

* * *

She dreams of her mother again tonight.

She wonders if she's still alive or if she's been killed, too. Somedays she hopes fervently it's the latter. She does not want, nor need, her mother's shame and pity to smother her. It's too much for her to be left alone with her memories. She doesn't need the real thing.

She's heard that her father's in prison. Somedays she wishes she had spoken out openly against him. Somedays she feels glad she didn't.

Mai and Ty Lee's visit is cut short today because one of the doctors wishes to see her. Their session is brief and mild and she refuses to talk. The doctor is frustrated and Azula is satisfied when she returns to her cell. At promptly seven o'clock in the evening her dinner is delivered: half a sandwich and a small bowl of soup, with a small makeshift salad and a glass of watered-down orange juice. She eats hungrily, quickly devouring what little there is for her. Then she leaves her tray and plates, sliding them under the door.

Zhao is the guard for her row tonight. He allows her to come outside the steel, metal trap for once. They talk.

It's nice.

It's normal.

It's ironic.

It's bittersweet.


	2. I Still Remember

**A/N: I can actually feel for Azula because we have similar situations. My mother's never loved me. She thinks I'm horrible. I have two years. I count the days till I can run away legally. As I do not wish for this to be incredibly mundane I'm going to release Azula soon. (: Not this chapter though!**

**Disclaimer: Same as first chapter. :/**

* * *

_I still remember the world_

_From the eyes of a child_

_Slowly those feelings_

_Were clouded by what I know now_

_Where has my heart gone?_

_An uneven trade for the real world_

_Oh I... I want to go back to_

_Believing in everything and knowing nothing at all_

_~Evanescence, Field of Innocence_

* * *

Azula had spent fifteen years pining for the affection of a woman who could never truly love her.

She'd try to be the model daughter: perfect, loyal, dutiful in every respect. But it hadn't helped matters much. In fact it had made them worse. Her mother would always prefer Zuko. It was a simple fact of life. So why the hell did it hurt so damn much? It was because she was her mother. Azula simply craved her love, affection, her attention.

Yet in Ursa's eyes her daughter was a monster, a failure.

And to Azula that made Ursa weak. Weak for preferring Zuko over her. Leaving her in the dust of Zuko, struggling. Thinking she was past the point of being saved when in reality she was begging for mercy and for help and for love. Ignoring her. Sheltering her heart from her daughter.

In Azula's warped mind it was Ursa's fault for everything wrong. And in a tiny, small, irrational way that was partly true.

If not for her mother leaving maybe her father wouldn't have become such a monster, either.

Because back then Azula wasn't so far gone as her mother had originally thought.

Every single fucking day she resisted ending her life for what? A woman too stupidly blinded by her love for her son to help her daughter? She sneered at mere mention of the very disgusting thought of dependency, but it was true.

And every single fucking night she allowed the torturous agony to continue because she wasn't her mother. She wasn't weak. She did not falter with fear or sadness or anger or any other stupid emotion. She needed to prove to Ursa that she could withstand anything and everything.

But in truth, Azula was that eight or nine year old girl trapped in a young woman's body.

* * *

Sometimes she counts the cracks on the ceiling. The doctors say she can be released when she talks to them, opens up. But she can't. Not after all the walls, all the dams, have already been built. So she's stuck on this Godforsaken island. Wonderful.

The only doctor she can stand was transferred last month. Around the time she clammed up.

Oh well. Too fucking bad.

That's pretty much her motto these days.

Insanity is a disease, she's found. It consumes her, spits her out, vanishes. Then it returns, over and over again and again until she's fucking begging for mercy.

It's, in a sense, a glimpse of hell.

* * *

"Can I give you a piece of advice, Azula?" Zhao asks as they sit outside in front of her cell door. She's got her knees loosely hugged to her chest, clenching and unclenching her fists on the cold stone floor.

"What's going to stop you?" she asks in a low murmur without bothering to look up.

"Azula," he whispers, gently cradling her face and turning it so they look eye to eye. She smiles weakly, faintly, and he smiles back, too, glad at her easy acceptance. It's a gesture of kindness and tenderness and love, not someone who wishes to use her and lose her.

He pushes a stray strand of her black hair behind her ear. It's an unruly, wispy lock of hair.

"Zhao."

"Be good to your doctors. Get out of here, Azula. Be free. Free from the broken mirror, from the broken spirit, from the broken girl. Get out of here and just be free."

"Zhao. I can't. I can't," she repeats in a fearful, hushed whisper.

"You've got to trust someone, Azula."

"Zhao. Do you know what that would mean?"

"I have no fucking clue, Azula, but you're in the prime of your life and deserve a second chance."

"Thank you," she murmurs, tears in her eyes. Old Azula would brush them away as a sign of weakness. New Azula merely accepts them as an unfortunate part of life.

"You're welcome. I need to change shifts with Jin soon, Azula. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Zhao?"

"Yes, Azula?"

"Thank you. For believing in me right now."

He smiles sadly, wistfully almost and replies, "You're fifteen, Azula. You've got your whole life in front of you. Don't waste it rotting inside of here. And don't waste it obsessing about your past. Trust them, let them help you and heal you, and move the hell on. Be the better person here, Azula. Rise above this shit-pit."

She giggles but nods vigorously to show her agreement.

"Goodbye," he whispers.

"Bye, Zhao," she murmurs, closing her eyes. She sighs and enters the cell.

It's back to the shadows for her.

* * *

She reluctantly follows Zhao's advice. She's New Azula and New Azula cherishes each and every single promise she or someone else makes. Plus she's not ornery and she doesn't lie because what's the fucking use anymore?

She agrees to talk to the female doctor.

For nine weeks they duke it out, until the truth has been poured out of her and Azula feels exhausted, empty and drained.

But now she can begin to heal and that's good. It makes New Azula feel hopeful.

Old Azula would feel foolish and weak.

But she's not that little girl crying in her daddy's bed anymore.

She's Azula, the mental patient, healing. Trying to move the fuck on.

And right now, she's succeeding. Old Azula would be sadistically gleeful at the triumph. New Azula is merely pleased with herself that she'll get out of here faster. She's told Zuko. She's no longer mad at him.

In fact, falling was the best damn thing that had ever happened to her. She'll stay with her brother and get a job maybe with Iroh and move on.

It's pleasant, too pleasant, but for once she feels good enough. For once she feels like she deserves this, that she earned this.

_Take that, you worthless bastard,_ she silently tells her father with a smile on her face.

She's happy.

She really, truly is.

No longer does she desire, nor crave, the attentions, affections, love, or approval of her mother, of her father, of her nation.

She's slowly but surely moving on.

The eight or nine year old little girl is growing up into the fifteen year old woman she should be based on physique.


End file.
